PAX Easter 2012 I met all the boys at Greater Than Games through friends of mine that had met Christopher on the JoCo cruise. My friends convinced me to play and got me hooked, Christopher ensured my awesomeness if I bought a little bit of everything (and I am way more awesome now because of it). Lugged it back to New Jersey on two trains a bus and a car ride and then showed all my friends.
Edit: Totally spelling or something
Ha! Shiny. 
Were you able to get in on the Infernal Relics Kickstarter?
Friend of mine bought a copy at PAX last year and I played a couple games with him and his daughter on a camping trip. Ordered my copy online on our way back to civilization as soon as we were within range of wireless communications.
Yes I was it came up a few weeks after PAX, I’m standing by the mailbox everyday waiting for all the goodies. I will chip in every time these guys do anything. And I’m a huge fan of the buy before it exists model they’ve adopted on kickstarter. I’m going to buy it anyway, I’m going to even pre-order it, of course I’ll pay ahead of time to make sure it happens.
Cool! I met Christopher on JoCo as well. Maybe I know your friends …
I know some of them are not into having their personal information on the internet. Lets just say one is from Boston, the other from New Jersey, and they’re both nerdy guys that play games and wear glasses. Narrowing it down as best I can. If you met them they are quite nice but I’ll leave it to them to out themselves here.
No worries, eh.
One of the great things about JCCC is that the vast majority of attendees are people that you’ll enjoy meeting.
It’s a very expensive, floating con. On top of appealing to people who are into geek culture, it takes a certain combination of resources, determination, and adventurous spirit to attend – particularly the first year, before anyone really knew what it would be like.
How did I discover SotM?
Dragonlordged came over and said “Hey guys! We got an awesome new card game you should try.”
And. Well. That was that.
Orphanleni, based on your story, I totally remember you! That’s comforting to me - I feel like I’m losing my mind most days. Anyway, thanks for coming and joining us here on the forum!
Unfortunately for me, I believe I would need an order of magnitude more money than I have now in order to afford to go to one of those JCCC events.
Yuppers, I’m the giant redhead with a suit tattooed on my chest. I stick out in peoples minds. You’re also the reason I fell in love with the game. As you probably don’t remember the first game I played I was Ra with Ab-Zero in the party, mistakes and badtimes. But you yourself suggested Wraith and I fell into that character kicking all kinds of space-ass. Thank you Christopher, you sold me hard.
I was browsing on Kickstarter and there is an option to see projects near you. I saw the Kickstarter for the Infernal Relic expansion and saw that I could get the base game rather than the expansion so figured that even if the game wasn't great I would be helping a somewhat local game company.
Just happened to be going to GenCon this year so picked up my copy and then figured I'd sit in on a demo. What better way to learn a new game than directly from the designers? Right after the demo I got back in the long line (silly free art print) and bought everything else.
Introduced the game to my weekly group the Sunday we returned and we've played at least one round every week since.
One of my buddies demoed the game at the Origins Game Fair in Columbus, Ohio. He loved it, bought the original edition and Rook City on the spot. He introduced it to me and I fell in love. 
I was browsing around my local game store in mid-April, looking at all the nifty new shininess and debating what to buy, if anything, with my extremely limited budget.
On the shelf, next to Red Dragon Inn (a banner favorite in my household), was a colorful little box with Sentinels of the Multiverse in big awesome letters.
It was a superhero game. I was on a superhero kick at the moment (given the imminent release of High Lord Whedon's The Avengers), and had unconsicously decided that the world (and my game shelf) needed more superhero games. No, strike that; the world needs more good superhero games. Very few seem to measure up.
It was fixed-deck (no collecting!), which immediately boosted my opinion of the game. I refuse to buy any more games with "collectible" in the description unless I'm really into the theme; the last one I bought was the Battlestar Galacitca CCG; a fun, solid game, but I had horrible luck on card pulls, and it just couldn't compete with other CCGs. There was MechWarrior: Dark Age years ago, but I stopped playing because everyone at the tournaments could afford to spend more than I could on the game, therefore able to field the rare, extremely powerful pieces, and I had no people to play casually with. In a collectible game, tactics only take you so far. Plus, fixed deck allows for distinctive characters with their own personalities, strengths, and weakness. Deck-building games are fun and all, but I really only get into them if the theme grabs me (my wife loves the Resident Evil DBG, so that sees a lot of play in my household).
It was cooperative! Of course it should be cooperative, it's about a superhero team! Plus, the world needs more well-designed cooperative games. The big cooperative games in my house are Arkham Horror (sheer scale means it doesn't get a lot of play), Elder Sign (scratches the Arkham Horror itch while being more accessible), Pandemic (the gold standard for cooperative games?) and Yggdrasil (extremely challenging and Norse mythology FTW!). Considering my game collection takes up two whole bookshelves, more cooperative or semi-cooperative games are always appreciated, as it allows me to get people into more advanced boardgames without the "I will murder all of you and then poop in the wound!" sentiments, or having to hold back/hold hands so new players don't get absolutely destroyed.
So, with those criteria and a minor recommendation from teh store owner (whom I've done business with since his store opened), I bought SotM and Rook City, opened them, marveled at how cool everything looked, sorted, bagged, read the rules, and played that night.
Holy crap, this game is amazing. It suddenly became my goal to make sure everyone I know, gamer or not, plays SotM at least once. It soon became the staple of gaming in my household, getting more play than RDI (which, believe me, is saying something). Also, SotM is the first game I started sleeving, because we were wearing out the cards at a ridiculous pace. Seriously, one of Fanatic's cards looks like somebody chewed on it.
Then, I joined the forum. this is unusual for me; I've never been much of a forum-goer. For one, I tend to novelize when I don't need to (this post is a perfect example). Less than a week later, the announcement for the EE/IR Kickstarter went up on the old forum. I was rather frustrated; I had just bought this awesome game, and now they're funding an even better version of it! But, I got over it, and told my wife to quit shopping so bloody much because I was putting out money to get more of this awesome new game!
Not really; my exact words were: "Honey, you know that Father's Day is coming up. Could I throw in on the Kickstarter for the new Sentinels expansion? I can get the fixed version of the core game, the new expansion, and the two out-of-print promo cards!" No, my wife doesn't rule the relationship; we're an equal partnership. But a loving tone and a carefully-timed shoulder rub does wonders for my negotiating position.
So far, everyone I've introduced the game to has loved it (with one exception). It sees a lot of play; I'm not huge on solitaire Sentinels, but my wife and I often play two-heroes-each, as do any random friend that stops by. I actually had a minor bidding war when I offered my copy of the 1st ed core game up for grabs. In the end, my cousin called dibs on it, on the grounds that he's family and he was going into the Air Force. He and his wife were never really board gamers until they spent some time with us; now they own their own copy of RDI and will have a copy of SotM to play over Skype with us.
TL;DR: I bought Sentinels of the Multiverse on a complete whim (I buy a lot of my games that way), loved the hell out of it, made everyone I know play it, and told (read: begged) my wife I was putting money in on the EE/IR Kickstarter.
-CSR
*sniff*
Sorry, guys. I've got something in both of my eyes.
I work at a board game store in Seattle, and we're open late on Fridays and Saturdays so people can come in and play games at our tables. One particularly slow Friday night, a regular came in and showed us Sentinels and I was hooked. I think he got it from PAX or the first kickstarter or something, because we didn't even have it in the store yet.
Then one day when I was opening the recent shipment of boxes I spotted a stack of Sentinels of the Multiverse. I set one aside immediately and once I was off my shift I bought it and opened it up. Been happy as a clam ever since. :)
Were you at PAX?
Alas, no. My store opted not to do a booth at PAX since three of our seven employees had tickets to be there all weekend (myself included, of course). Maybe one day we'll have a table there, but we haven't yet.
EDIT: To clarify… Yes, I was at PAX. No, my store did not have a booth there. I was there recreationally.
Did you come by the booth? Did we meet?
It's definitely possible. I was there Friday and Saturday. :)